I'm a Medium & My Cat Died. This is why it still sucks.

The first time I saw a ghost, I was 7 years old. 

It doesn’t happen often; rarely, in fact. Usually I sense Spirit with my other psychic gifts but it's not often that they manifest visually as clearly as they did that day at 7. I saw my great-grandfather's face inches from mine, a man who passed away when I was just a baby. 

I remember when the face faded from view, I took a broken breath and thought, “holy crap, I saw a ghost,” but, my ego set in faster than the next thought could form and I told myself I was just imagining it. 

In the years that followed, through teendom and beyond, I was visited by many ghosts in many forms. Often in my dreams or cryptic messages that floated through my consciousness without prompting. 

At 22, I purchased my first tarot deck. A story for another day, I suppose, but someday I’ll tell you about how I was drawn to that corner of the bookstore months before I took her home. I learned to do readings for friends at parties over beer cans and spilled chasers. 

At 23, I sat up straight in bed and gasped. My heart stopped. It picked up again furiously when the phone rang and my boyfriend (now, husband) called to say his mother had just passed away. I had felt her go right through me.

Now, at 35, I’m in my 4th year of business as a professional psychic-medium and have spent more time connecting with Spirit, studying afterlife experiences, and understanding the delicate and intricate web of creation than I ever would have imagined. I have a plethora of my own lived experiences and real life encounters but I’ve also done due diligence in my personal study of near death experiences and understanding the afterlife. And yet, my cat died yesterday and I grieve. Oh, how I am grieving. Deeply. Painfully. Physically. My familiar was a gift to our family. His life was well lived and in complete comfort and he made people smile whenever they visited or had his face grace the internet. And while I can connect with his energy at any time in ways that many people would crave, I still have a real physical void that Spirit can never fill. 

And this, my friends, is where our understanding of Spirit has to begin with. Often when I refer to someone passing away, I simply say “they are returning to Spirit.” Spirit is our natural state and we are simply having this physical experience which only lasts for a little while. As we transition from physical back to Spirit, we expand. No longer trapped by the confines of physical reality, we become more of who we are with a wider understanding of how everything works together. 

We, as a human, only have one life. It is unique and irreplaceable. 

We, as a Spirit, are currently living many existences, human and otherwise. 

Imagine it like a computer,  able to hold hundreds of browsers open, each one running a different video, all within the same unit. It’s constantly running more and more programs, opening some and exiting others, gathering data and altering the experience. 

You, in this human life, are just one of the videos playing. Living out an experience you desired to have. Remember we are like the senses, sending information back to the brain. So as we live this life, we encounter more information about this world and we think “oh, I’d love to experience that!”

That means that somewhere perhaps a part of my soul is napping on the Savannah as a lioness because I’d thought how cool it would be to be a lion once. While another is experiencing an alternate human reality maybe as a celebrity winning an Oscar or a bootlegger during the prohibition. The possibilities of what our soul chooses to experience is truly limitless. We see the evidence of these effects often (de ja vu, recurring/lucid dreaming, astral travel, floaty sudden detachment). There are certain souls who experience these phenomena and peek at their other “videos” more often and we call them Multi-Dimensional. (More on this another day…). 

The point of having these experiences at all is to send information back to our Higher Self. Much like the brain, Spirit is encased in darkness. In Spirit we know all, but it is in Physical that we experience. For example, you could learn everything in the world there is to know about Italy. You could memorize the history, study the culture, and learn the language. You could spend your entire life perfecting Italian living and lifestyle, but nothing– not even all the knowledge in the Universe– could replace the experience of being in Italy. And maybe you know that going to Italy is going to be laborious, even painful at times. You may have to endure frustrating conditions or confusion, it may cost you in many ways, but still… you want to experience what it’s like to smell Italian air and eat Italian food and feel Italian cobblestone. So you endure the hardships, to gain the experience. 

All of our experiences are meant to expire at different times. Some of us come into this human life with our deaths set; their contract includes their death and oftentimes these individuals’ death are impactful to all of society. They’re almost fated and have big ripples out into the world. Others choose to have it be more of a surprise party and say,  “when my time is done and my soul has been fulfilled, when my soul has found pure satisfaction with this life, you may end my experience.” Others may realize that the experience wasn't what they wanted, they may choose to leave. There are many reasons for our departure from the physical but the most common one will remain to be that our soul has found fulfillment here, and it’s now time to move on. 

This gives my heart some peace as we grieve our sweet Batman. Because with every fiber of my being I believe that his soul found true and whole fulfillment here with us in this experience and now he is ready to go on to the next. To close this video tab, and give his attention elsewhere. Maybe he’s a jaguar in the jungle or choosing to be reborn as a human himself. As a medium, I feel gifted that I know his soul is at peace and that he is going on for more journeys ahead but as his pet mom, I’m still missing the physicality of him. And I always will!This is the joy of humanhood that we too often forget. We are here to experience love. Remember, in Spirit, we know all… but in physical, we experience. We come here with the understanding that we must endure the hardships to gain the otherwise impossible experience of a hug, a kiss, a pet. These are impossible in Spirit. And they are absolutely impossible to replicate ever again. You are an endless eternal being who will live countless lives but the bittersweet truth is: you only get this one once. You can respawn with all the same people, at the same time, with the same lessons and themes but still you could not perfectly replicate this life again. So, for your Spirit, experience your life. Intentionally. Yes, enjoy the parts you’re meant to enjoy but more importantly be present in it. Don’t live out of habit. Don’t miss all the parts that matter by chasing the wrong things. 

You are contributing to the evolution of your soul by living here. Do it on purpose.